Disciplinary-Specific Writing Guides

Writing Guides across the Disciplines

Here is a short list of writing guides you may want to reference in your W course, organized by discipline. Texts selected include the most recent versions of guides previously used in upper-division courses or texts positively reviewed, either by peer-reviewed publications, or by instructors, subject librarians, and students at other institutions. Numbers in parentheses reflect pricing through Amazon. Web resources have been selected from reputable institutions of higher education for their thorough coverage of writing genres, conventions, and practices in the disciplines and because of their potential applicability in our coursework at UCI.

[CONSPICUOUS ABSENCE: You may notice no entry for Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. According to a Chronicle of Higher Ed‘s appraisal commemorating its 50-year anniversary, the guide is benign at best and inconsistent, imprecise, and misleading at worst on both matters of grammar and style. A particularly damning assessment from the piece’s author, linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum: “The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can’t help it, because they don’t know how to identify what they condemn” (“50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice” April 17, 2009). Should you find parts of that text useful, however, you will find an online version here: http://www.bartleby.com/141/index.html.]